UNDP in Yemen

Signing of five agreements to address environmental challenges in Socotra

01 Dec 2013

Beautiful Landscape from Socotra Island

Sana’a, Sunday, 1st December 2013 – A signing ceremony took place at United Nations Development Programme office in Sana’a between the Global Environmental Facility, Small Grant Programme (GEF-SGP) and five Non-governmental Organizations (NGOs) and Community Based Organizations (CBOs) from Socotra to implement specific interventions to address environmental challenges in their localities.

During the event, addressing signatories Mr. Mr. Ismail Ould Cheikh UN Resident Coordinator stated that water resources and vegetation are scarce phasing progressive depletion due to overuses. During current humane and transitional challenges, necessity dictates that we make all efforts to stop such irreversible environmental degradation as possible especially when considering population expansion that overwhelming water and vegetation that required proper management.

Three of the five projects will focus on communities’ livelihood improvement through provision of water for human and animals. These projects came as a result of previous successful interventions and lessons learned in rain-water harvesting in Socotra. The benefiting Communities along with GEF-SGP support are investing tremendous efforts and funds towards achieving water security. Almost 829 families will benefit from the three water related projects.

The fourth project is related to the adaptation of renewal energy for generation of electricity for the village of Matyaf in Nujid, whereby 53 homes will be lightening using solar panels. The fifth project aims in addressing nutrition through income generation approach. This project will assist women in Manafou village through capacity building to develop their homes gardens’ activities for vegetables production and marketing. They will be enabled to secure better nutrition for their families and income generation from the sale of diversity of vegetable crops to the local society.

The United Nations has declared 2014 as year for promoting family agriculture as means of combating poverty and hunger in the world. The five projects aim to help local communities in addressing their respective environmental challenges in Momi Plateau, shibiro, Matyaf, Qabehaten and Manafou, in which 830 families with 8,400 inhabitants will benefit.

The total budgets of these five community projects amounting to US$ 688,111, in which the Small Grant Programme of the Global Environmental Facility will provide US$ 217,587, and the remaining amount of US$ 470,524 will be mobilized locally by the respective non-governmental organization.

Since 2004, the Small Grant Programme of the Global Environmental Facility had financed 62 communities’ projects which were implemented by non-governmental organizations and community based organizations across the country in addressing local environmental challenges, in which US$ 1.8 million was provided by the Programme and US$ 3.2 million was mobilized from the respective local partners.